Work in progress - Enhancing new IT STEM literacies for 7th and 8th grade learning

Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology (RHIT) is developing collaboration between RHIT, four Indiana school districts, and several businesses and industries requiring high technological skills from their employees. We are building upon PRISM, our highly successful digital portal (http://www.rose-prism.org), which currently provides standards-indexed, online resources for Indiana teachers of STEM courses. We describe a program combining a three-week, teacher summer institute combined with continuing academic-year support to accomplish three inter-related objectives. First, the program will provide 60 seventh and eighth grade STEM teachers an opportunity to custom- build web-delivered learning units featuring the new IT literacies necessary for STEM careers in the 21st Century. Second, each of the 60 teachers will work with a mentor, skilled in the latest educational practice for nurturing under-represented learners in STEM courses. Third, during the third week of the summer institute, each teacher will collaborate with a cadre of seventh and eighth grade under-represented students, who will field-test the learning units under development. These students will also spend a significant portion of their time touring local high-tech industries, attending hands-on introductions to science and engineering careers, and participating in a consolidating virtual scavenger hunt using their newly- honed IT skills.